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The Supreme Court said on Thursday that it would consider the listing of applications to review its verdict of December 14 that rejected the need for an investigation into the agreement to obtain 36 Rafale fighter jets from France. A bench headed by Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi said that four applications or petitions were filed in the Rafale issue and one of them is still pending with the registry due to default.
When lawyer Prashant Bhushan sought urgent listing of the petitions in the Rafale matter, the bench also comprising Justices L N Rao and Sanjiv Khanna said that the combination (of the judges) of the bench will have to be changed.
Justices S K Kaul and K M Joseph, who were part of the bench that issued the verdict of Rafale, are not sharing the bench with CJI as per present roster arrangement. Therefore, a bench with this combination will have to be specially constituted to listen to review requests.
Bhushan said that the petition for review submitted by Aya Rajya Sabha, MP Sanjay Singh, had flaws and that other petitions had no flaws to cure. He also said that, in addition to the petition for review, an application for persecution for the offence of perjury against some central government employees for providing misleading information to the court was also filed.
On December 14 last year, the apex court rejected a handful of PILs, including that presented by former Union ministers, Yashwant Sinha, Arun Shourie and Bhushan, saying that there was "no occasion to doubt" the Centre’s decision-making process in acquiring 36 Rafale jets from France.
The trio had moved the apex court on Monday to demand the initiation of perjury proceedings against central government officials for alleged "false or misleading" information in a sealed cover in Rafale's high-profile case.
The petition is based on the information contained in the recently presented report of the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG), and also the reports of The Hindu and The Caravan. The petitioners submitted that the Hon’ble Court has been misled in issuing its judgment based on false evidence and the elimination of crucial pertinent information by the government in the judicial proceedings.
The petitioners seek an investigation to find out the officials responsible for making the 'note', and registration of perjury complaint in the exercise of powers under Section 340 read with 195 of the Code of Criminal Procedure.
As this false evidence has been given / suppression of information done in the" notes "submitted pursuant to the Orders of the Hon'ble Court, it is also derogatory and has diminished the dignity and majesty of the Honorable Court and suo moto action should be considered by the Hon'ble Court against errant official/s.
Advocate M L Sharma was the first petitioner in the case. Later, another lawyer, Vineet Dhanda, moved the apex court seeking an investigation supervised by the court into the deal. Even AAP leader Sanjay Singh filed a petition. After the three petitions were filed, Sinha, Shourie and Bhushan moved the Supreme Court seeking a direction to the CBI to register an FIR for alleged irregularities in the deal.
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